[duckmysick]

Question for anyone self-hosting vaultwarden: how reliable is it and how do you harden it?

I'm thinking about running it in a container (Podman Quadlet with systemd) behind a VPN, with daily backups with borg. Anything I'm overlooking here?

[JimBlackwood]

I’ve used Vaultwarden for at lesst 7 years, I’m sure for longer but I’m not sure how long.

Never had an issue with Vaultwarden itself. Restored from backups several times for a variety of reasons (migrating host, corrupt hard disk, re-installs) and that always worked first try.

In regards to hardering, the wiki has a good guide: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden/wiki/Hardening-Gu....

[akerl_]

That guide is wild. By default it allows public registration, shows password hints, requires a reverse proxy for robust TLS but then passes tokens via GET params, runs in the container as root. Recommends fail2ban because it doesn't have any coverage against brute force. Recommends using a custom path for security.

This feels less like a guide on hardening Vaultwarden than a guide on why I should be skeptical about it.

[tacticalturtle]

I’m not an expert with web sockets or web development - but re: Get Params, Vaultwarden has to follow the API of the upstream Bitwarden implementation:

https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden/discussions/1549#...

The upstream also had this issue, which appeared to be closed without a PR:

https://github.com/bitwarden/server/issues/3650

[drzaiusx11]

Requiring a reverse proxy for TLS is pretty standard, but the rest of those findings are egregious (if they haven't been addressed yet.)

[akerl_]

The part I found jarring was that it will totally do TLS for you but using a TLS stack they don’t recommend, and if you put it behind a reverse proxy you also need to know to do custom log redaction to avoid logging tokens.

[harrall]

Those problems are endemic to all web apps.

e.g. You can’t just provide software to people that obtains TLS certs on their behalf: you have no idea how their infra is setup.

Hosting any app on your own infra is a serious skill set.

[akerl_]

> Those problems are endemic to all web apps.

No, they’re not.

They’re design choices where the default that has been chosen is dangerous for somebody deploying the software. Plenty of web apps do not have those pitfalls.

[zx8080]

Since it's authored by the vaultwarden collaborators, I would not trust the project any bit of my passwords.

[EvanAnderson]

Pretty similar experience for me, albeit I've only been managing it for about a year.

Restore from backup testing was straightforward. We haven't had any problems w/ the application itself.

I used that that hardening guide for my setup. The one I manage is exposed to the Internet and I'm bringing traffic into it via a reverse proxy.

[void-star]

I have my vaultwarden running on a container on my home-lab server acessible only from Tailscale. The container itself is only accessible as its own node on my Tailscale private network and can’t be reached any other way (there are no inbound port forwards for the container itself, tailscale handles this)

My phone and laptop both use tailscale to access this and a few other containers I have set up similarly. I also have tailscale ACL rules to limit just “me” or whomever I want to allow to use it (family etc) also on my tailnet.

Backups are encrypted and stored locally as well as to AWS glacier.

I love it and it works great.

[msdz]

What would happen if you lost access to phone and laptop? Is there another "backup" device, or a mechanism to register a new device to your Tailscale network that doesn't require vaultwarden?

[cobertos]

I've never had a reliability issue with Vaultwarden. Hosted it 5+ years now. Even with random off/on of the server and other bumps in the road in life, the Docker container I run has had no issues with hosting. The user interface is friendly but can be just a little slow.

Mine is not exposed to the public internet, though some friends of mine do. I use a VPN when I need to access fresh data from the home server, otherwise both the Firefox client and Android client will generally keep a cache of the last data pull when they had connection (so it wasn't an issue the 4 or so years I didn't have a VPN yet).

[xienze]

> how do you harden it?

By not exposing it to the wider internet. When I use a client (iPhone, browser, etc.) while on the home network, it syncs. While off the network, the last synced data is still there. That's been good enough for me.

[ibizaman]

When the server can’t be accessed, you can’t create a secret, right? This has been quite annoying in my experience. I’d still recommend Bitwarden clients with self-hosted Vaultwarden.

[danparsonson]

Mobile wireguard clients are very good as a solution to the access problem.

[rpcope1]

I've got it running in an LXC container. Other than occasionally updating it, it's been entirely trouble free (I did need to work to get it out of the Docker container but that's a problem most won't have). Honestly one of the most useful and low trouble self-hosted apps I've used next to Dokuwiki. As far as hardening, I have not done a huge amount, but it lives on my LAN and is only reachable via VPN from the outside, which again works surprisingly well even with my Android phone.

I just take ZFS snapshots. I've restored a couple of times that way just to test DR and it worked pretty well.

[hypeatei]

> Anything I'm overlooking here?

Not technical, but the person behind that project now works for Bitwarden so there's some risk of a rugpull. Of course it's OSS but you'll need to trust a fork or maintain it yourself if said rugpull happens.

[Snow_Falls]

The maintainer has said that they've been given permission to maintain it in their free time. All it takes is a bad quarter and the CEO decides they don't want to be supporting a competitor and that goes away. It's possible that a community continuation could happen but I wouldn't rely on something so uncertain for something as important as credentials.

[l72]

It’s a bad strategy. I am capable so I host an instance of vaultwarden for myself and spouse (only available via our vpn)

But when friends and family ask for my recommendation I send them to Bitwarden and they pay for the service.

If it wasn’t for vaultwarden and the clients being open source I would not be using it nor recommending it.

I’d probably still be using keepass with manual sync and when friends and family ask for suggestions I’d probably shrug and say I don’t trust any of them.

[giancarlostoro]

Kind of makes a lot of sense that they wound up working there too.

[akerl_]

The expansion of "rugpull" to encompass "a company or open source developer changing the roadmap or level of investment in something they develop" is fascinating.

[wolvoleo]

I think that term refers more to the conflict of interest that now exists.

[PunchyHamster]

I touched it never aside from updates and it never failed. I compiled it from sources tho

[thesuitonym]

It's as reliable as you make it.